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Category Archives: Space

A woman was the first to identify a pulsar (and the next three after that). Reading through 96 feet of radio charts every day, Jocelyn Bell Burnell identified a regularly repeating bit of “scruff” which came from the same direction in space every day.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Photo from the Wikimedia Commons by Harry the Dirty Dog, in the public domain.

walking in on a high-level meeting in which her supervisor and his colleagues laughed about the possibility (her own retelling),

she went through the charts and found another repeating radio source at the same frequency. After Christmas, she found two more.

It should be noted that she feels she’s earned exactly as much credit as she deserves because, again, she’s about the only one who does. Six years later, the 1974 Nobel for physics was awarded to astronomers for the first time – her supervisor and her colleague. In fact, her supervisor was cited by the Nobel committee “for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars.” On the Nobel, she has said, “Thirdly, I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them.” But then she continued, “Finally, I am not myself upset about it –after all, I am in good company, am I not!”

One of the things women bring to a research project, or indeed any project, is they come from a different place, they’ve got a different background. Science has been named, developed, interpreted by white males for decades and women view the conventional wisdom from a slightly different angle — and that sometimes means they can clearly point to flaws in the logic, gaps in the argument, they can give a different perspective of what science is.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell brought her perspective in to a nascent field; she was involved in naming, developing and interpreting it. Human knowledge is richer for her mind and her work.

Addendum

Wasn’t it very rare to have a woman Ph.D. candidate in science back then? Well, here’s an anecdote from the Belfast Telegraph:

There was a tradition among the students that when a female walked into a lecture theatre all the guys stamped and whistled and called and banged the desk. And I faced that for every class I walked into for my last two years.

Yesterday, NASA announced that Spirit had missed a planned transmission. To date, Spirit (and its twin, Opportunity) have lasted more than 2150 martian days longer than the expected 90. Not just lasted, but thrived – originally planned to travel a single kilometre, Spirit logged 10 before becoming stuck in soft soil. After trying and failing to escape for half a year (earth years), NASA decided to give up on mobility and allowed Spirit to perform science. That was two months ago. Today, it seems to have shut down to charge its batteries.

These two little rovers have lasted longer, seen more, done more than anybody ever expected, and have survived draining conditions. Their tenacity has earned them empathy and celebration. In tribute to Spirit, and in the hope it will revive and continue to contribute to our understanding of Mars, I wanted to offer up my best wishes to the rovers, and to all the people at NASA who keep them going. Rock on, Spirit!